Marketing and the CEO get on the same page
Murray Howe
I help you align marketing with the business bottom line. Alignment | Operations | Capability | Readiness
One of the things that historically stood in the way of marketing’s perception and progress within organisations was that 8 in 10 CEOs didn’t trust their CMO:
“I know I need marketing – I just don’t know if I need this marketing.”
Thankfully, this improved following the Covid crisis when it came to performance, with 71 per cent of CMOs averaging a ‘B grade ’ or better from their CEO according to a recent survey that asked CEOs to rate their CMO on a scale from ‘A’ to ‘F’ .
But there is still work to be done when it comes to relationships.
While most CMOs earned ‘A’ and ‘B’ grades for tangible outputs such as creative, media and data, they received ‘B’s and ‘C’s for relationships with their fellow executives.
How did we get here?
According to Kimberly A Whitler’s insightful 2017 HBR article Why CMOs Never Last And What To Do About It’ , sometimes CMOs are expected to drive growth without any input over many of the growth drivers; sometimes the CEO’s expectations and the CMO’s authority and remit are so mis-aligned that success becomes untenable and the relationship breaks down.
Ownership of customer data helps give marketing authority within organisations but practically speaking, what can CMOs do to build relationships with the C-suite and get the support of the CEO?
A great way to build trust while laying the foundation for an enterprise-level transformation of marketing – beautifully demonstrated by Australia Post’s CMO Amber Collins – is for marketing to focus on being ‘useful’ internally. Identify and help eliminate points of process and delivery friction wherever they occur along the customer journey, building trust with colleagues and in the process improving the customer experience and cross functional operational performance.
When marketing’s usefulness and credibility has been established at the leadership table, marketing will have earned the right and achieved the influence and trust to pursue brand and supporting business transformations needed to drive the growth agenda.
A word of warning, however: we must take care not to be distracted or allow our hard-won influence to be diluted. There’s a difference between working collaboratively on the right things aligned to our agenda and simply providing marketing support for everyone else’s initiatives.
In the Australia Post example, marketing identified operational issues affecting customer experience and played its part in helping to solve those problems, paving the way for the company’s largest ever (and successful) “Delivering for Australia” campaign.
A useful model for us to think about and apply here is the “value creation zone ”, as marketing leader Thomas Barta calls it: That shared space where creating value for customers and value for the company, as well as value for ourselves align.
As Thomas observes, the greater this zone, the more aligned the interests of the business and customer - to which marketing serves as intermediary - the greater the influence marketing will have.
It is in this 'V-Zone' that we should aim to reside and expand our efforts if we want to improve our alignment with the CEO.
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Part 3 of 7?in this series exploring the forces at play supporting a leader intent on reshaping the role of marketing, helping turn marketers from brand builders into marketing engineers for growth.
Read Part 1:?Structural change: our constant companion
Read Part 2: Knowing the customer (marketing’s secret superpower)
Next, I'll share how?the need for organisational agility expands marketing’s remit to the enterprise.?Stay tuned for this and 3 other themes over the coming weeks.
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I specialise in working with C-suite Leaders and Executive Teams leading world class organisations; especially through times of complexity and demanding change | Author of The Real Method | Speaker | Proud WACL Member
1 年Trust is such an important part of leadership.
Founder Penumbra
1 年That study is 11 years old!
Building brands and connecting consumers in the Outdoor and Off-road Industries
1 年That sounds about right! I think the challenge from the outset is actually born from fear rather than from a lack of faith in capability. What I mean by that is that most organisations at their core are purely about profit, and the focus is always short term. Marketers are one of the few disciplines that really cover the entire spectrum of the business and consider the customer throught the entire business, and this means they see where there is a lack of alignment between vision mission and values, Brand promise, and reality. The problem is that pointing this out, while vital to success undermines the CEO whose motives are to appear like they care, while in reality delivering the bottom line. Marketers then become someone who reminds senior leadership of the risks or gaps in their plan, and requires them to invest to fix them, which then affects the bottom line. Or they become a threat who can reveal the secrets of the card trick they are wowing everyone else with. Bottom line is that the CEO and CMO need to align and own what the business is. Maybe marketers need to shed their investment in the brand and build the brand off what the business actually is, although the problem is that owning that would be a scary idea from the CEO
Attended Al meezan
1 年Yes
CEO at Stirling Marketing | B2B Technology Marketing
1 年Great series Murray. Looking forward to the next installment. 8 out of 10 is pretty damning for marketing - and a massive opportunity to fix this relationship.